The Cost of Cooking Chicken in Tomato Garlic Sauce, Couscous, and Salad

Last week I “discovered” how easy it was to combine meat and sauce in the slow cooker, and cooked up a batch of pork chops and applesauce (with couscous and asparagus).

This week, I made chicken in a tomato garlic sauce—I was going to call this a chicken cacciatore, but it didn’t turn out that way at all—with more couscous and a green salad.

The chicken, sauce, and couscous lasted for three meals, so let’s break down the cost:

Open Nature chicken breast tenders, 0.87 lb: $5.21

Del Monte diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano, two 14.5 oz cans: $2.00

Near East couscous, Original Plain, 8 oz: $1.00 (I had bought four $2.00 boxes of Near East couscous, thinking I would use one whole box for the two pork and applesauce dinners and one whole box for the chicken dinners, but I ended up cooking half of one box for the pork and the other half for the chicken)

Garlic, four cloves: $0.25 (approximately; I don’t remember how much I paid for the garlic, but I can usually get a head for $1.00)

Additional oregano, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper from my spice rack: $0.20 (I can never figure out how to accurately calculate how much I pay for spices, so I’ll estimate)

Base cost for three meals’ worth of chicken in tomato garlic sauce with couscous: $8.66

Cost per meal: $2.89

For the first dinner, I ate the chicken, sauce, and couscous with a green salad. Costs as follows:

O Organics Spring Mix, about 1 cup from one of those “1 lb for $5” tubs: $0.50

Kraft Zesty Italian dressing, one teaspoons: $0.03 (I actually did the math on that one; the bottle cost $3.99, contained 48 tablespoons, and there are three teaspoons to a tablespoon)

Total first meal cost: $3.42

This slow cooker project didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped. The chicken seemed to suck all of the flavor out of the sauce. Angela H had suggested adding red wine, which I didn’t end up getting, but maybe that would have helped. Maybe I should have added a little olive oil or used chicken thighs instead of chicken breasts, which is what you all suggested doing after my last flavorless chicken meal.

What I did do, when I cooked up the leftovers, was bake the chicken, sauce, and couscous with one ounce of Tillamook cheddar cheese ($0.37) and serve it along with the $0.53-cent salad and half an orange ($0.44).

Total second meal cost: $4.23

The third meal, which I’ll eat tonight, should cost much the same.

I can deal with a bland dinner (and some cheese-topped leftovers), but I’m disappointed that this didn’t turn out. I’ve made plenty of spaghetti sauces out of cans of diced tomatoes plus garlic and a handful of extra spices, and I thought that adding chicken would be an obvious next step.

What would you have done differently?

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